He would both protect the little darlings as they slept, like a guard dog, and, (so fortunate!) would assure them that any age into which they woke would be a good era. He was the Judge and Arbiter of Ages, and he condemned and destroyed whole civilizations with a wave of his hand. Hah! As if any creature could possess such authority and prowess. Convenient, was it not, that he fulfilled both roles?

No, little wee lordlings, there is no Judge of Ages. He is a myth invented by Nymphs, an opiate falsehood meant to deceive the Many.

6. Proof

Illiance, with a sidelong glance at Ull, said softly, “Ask Soorm scion Asvid where from his certainty happens to derive its solid nature. He speaks with force upon a topic muchly debated. Does he enjoy some proof to confirm his words, that there is no one founder to the Tombs?”

When the question was translated, Soorm goggled his mismatched eyes and showed his horrid teeth in grin or grimace. His seal-face was too inflexible for subtle expressions.

“Proof? Nonsense! How can there be proof that nothing is nothing? A shadow has no weight; a reflection in a looking glass makes no noise. Do you expect me to call the Judge of Ages here out of the abyss of time, and have him testify as to his own nonexistence? Such a testimony would be unreal, coming from a unreal man, would it not?”

Menelaus said to the Blue Men, “I would also like to add that I agree with Soorm. I have reentered and exited the Tombs many times, first in one land, and then in another, and saw no evidence of any central leadership, or even that one Tomb communicated with another. I can testify that the Judge of Ages is myth. But now I have a question for you, Preceptor Illiance.”

Ull narrowed his heavily lidded eyes in annoyance, but Illiance nodded serenely.

“Illiance, you said that if I recognized the brotherhood that all academics across the ages share, this imposes a moral burden on me to help your research. Right?”

Illiance nodded. “I did not use the word burden, but you are essentially correct.”

“Is this obligation one-way, or two-way?”

Illiance said, “A degree of reciprocity is to be expected. Have you some research of your own to which we, without undue extension of resources, may make a contribution?”

“Thanks for volunteering and yes, indeedy-do, I do. I told you I study the decline and fall of civilizations. I was ordered to do so, and I don’t see any reason to stop and—to be frank—don’t have anything else worth doing. To be really frank, I’ll tell you that history is a stenchified huge disappointment to me, gentlemen! I was expecting to wake up in a future with ten-mile-high skyscrapers, flying horseless carriages made of antigravity metal powered by atmospheric electricity, atomic-powered lightbulbs, rocket-jetpacks able to surpass the speed of sound, and starships able to surpass the speed of light. Instead I wake up in a dingy camp occupied by Moreau dogs that any apprentice biotechnician could have whipped up in his wine cellar, and they are toting muzzle-loaders and cutlasses. So where the hell is the future? What happened to it? What did you people do?”

Illiance said, “Your model assumes that technological progress is ever-increasing and unidirectional. The premise is false. Technological progress is the apex of a complex and specialized social organism reacting to specific environmental pressures, and then only for societies embracing particular metaphysical and ontological beliefs, social priorities, economic structures, academic liberties, and unity of worldview. The disarrangement of any element in the organism hinders, slows, or reverses that progress and, in turn, creates additional disarrangement. Naturally, such cascade failures can be avoided if the degree of interdependence of worldwide systems is minimized: self-sufficiency is more adroit. Progress is not an unmitigated good.”

Menelaus said slowly, “Is your philosophy of living simply something that sprang out of a period of widespread social collapse? What happened to the world outside? Are you survivors of the asteroid strike?”

Ull interrupted, “The question is an aberration distorting the conversational flow of our verbal information exchanges, and must be relegated to a lower priority. Lance-Corporal Beta Anubis, the technological progress of the prior aeons was hindered by a retarding element. The Tomb system prevents the errors and unsanities of previous aeons from expiring when due, by preserving representatives of each generation to the next; and, by a natural selection, only psychologically malcontented or physically ill seek out long-term hibernation.”

Menelaus looked dumbfounded. “Hold on! Are—are you claiming the presence of this so-called Judge of Ages, the builder of the Tomb system, that he is the thing dragging civilization back from progress?”

Ull looked at him coldly. “The hypothesis fits the available facts.”

Menelaus said, “You want my help? Then let me ask a few questions of my own, and maybe we can expand the pool of available facts.”

Illiance made a small, delicate gesture with his fingers, which could have meant anything. Menelaus decided to interpret it as a gesture of consent, or else not to care what it meant. He turned to Soorm (who had been watching both sides of the conversation with his independently moving eyes) and spoke in Leech: “Tell what you know of Reyes y Pastor.”

7. Soorm in Artabria

The only way to speak of Pastor is to tell you of my whole life, and this for reasons that will become clear.

I was born in slavery and pain, as all my kind are born, amid the stench in the surgical pits of the Iatrocrats, who in those times were called the Leeches. I was the scion of Moord scion Elwe, the most accomplished genius of his age, and I was the summit of his art, for my excellent master had outdone himself. At tourney or melee or assassination or for kidnapping virgins to serve in the mothering racks, I was the most famed and most feared in all the Artabrian land. The Leeches I served gained many dormitories of donors by my victories, and extended their lives by many hundreds of years, grinding their elixirs from the glands of many captured children: and so the Leeches of Moord and his Clades and auxiliaries waxed fat and affluent, great and gay.

The power of the Artabrians, of which Moord was not the least, extended from Aragon and Castile down the Duero toward the coast, and the great walled Clade city of Olissipona became ours. When that happened, ours became a naval power, facing corsairs from the north of the world, where the world-forest forms a roof of pine and conifer half a thousand feet above the benighted lands. We fought wallowing kragens from Hibernia and nicors from Thule.

I was modified to become a dweller in the sea, and I traveled afar on the business of the Leeches who created me, slaying whom it was given me to slay, capsizing the coracles of mariners, but I was for a short space free from endless, smothering canopy of leaves, and I floated at night beneath the stars, and wondered at them.

Alas for the Leeches that I was given gills! For in the salt sea I breathed the wind of liberty, and it was wine to me. I grew curious about hither shores, and distant lands where other parts of the world-forest grew. And I saw the migrations of the great seabirds in an empty, leafless sky.

Often I would wound the vessels of mariners, leaving them adrift or aground, toying with their crew most slowly, murdering them one by one across a space of days or weeks while they thirsted and starved. I did this because I was curious, and they would tell me tales of things afar or long ago, that I might spare them for last, or eat their legs before I ate their head. And so I learned that there was a larger world and a deeper time.